That was making sugar without the aid of a kettle, and no doubt many will almost doubt the accuracy of the statement. It is a positive fact, however, for my forefathers, who came to this province in the last century, have handed down in family tradition the story of the process just as I have narrated it. Indeed they were eye-witnesses of the process themselves. With the advent of settlers, of course, the Indian soon learned better, and traded his furs with the fur dealer for iron kettles, and then began making sugar much as the white man does to-day. As to the cleanliness of the Indian method, it is hardly necessary to speak. One can just fancy as to what amount of cinders would be conveyed by the stones drawn from the fire repeatedly and placed into the boiling syrup. Yet with cinders and all a sweetness was found at the bottom, and no doubt the Indian enjoyed his sugar, with all its cinders and ashes, quite as much as we do to-day with all our methods of cleanliness. It used to be an old saying that every one must eat his peck of dirt before he died. Granting the truth of the old saying, then, our Indian brother certainly got his peck of that commodity before half his ordinary life would be spent; and yet the Indian, with all his crudeness, taught the first white settlers to love the toothsome sweet, and to him we owe our knowledge of maple sugar. The sugar maple is the emblematic maple of our country, whose leaves we couple with the beaver to form our national escutcheon. Its timber is the most valuable for firewood of any in our country, and equally as valuable for many purposes when made into lumber. Waggon axles have been formerly made from its wood. It is the cleanest, prettiest tree among our forests, and the most sought for as a shade-tree, but, being a slow grower, is many times crowded out by trees of swifter growth. It is the tree of Canada in a word, and added to its qualities, as before spoken of, it produces a succulent sap, whose flavor is peculiar to the maple and to the maple alone. Scientists, who imitate nature with their compounds, have utterly failed in producing, by all their mixtures and compounds, a flavor of the genuine maple. Honey can be counterfeited, but maple sugar never. Just what the peculiar charm is about the sweet produced by this incomparable tree one cannot describe in words. It has only to be indulged in to be appreciated. Among all the sweets its sweet is the most delicate and pleasing, and we doubt if ambrosial nectar, supposed to be prepared by the ancients for the immortal gods, began to equal it. So the gods of the ancients would have had a better time of it had they been among the North American settlers, than around and about the Ægean.